Fallen Earth for Dummies

Fallen Earth is a game with a steep learning curve if you try and compare it to other MMORPG games such as World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, or even Aion. Anyone loading the game up for the first time might find themselves a bit overwhelmed and even intimidated by the sheer scope of it, especially if you’re nothing more than a casual gamer. And let’s be honest here, if you’re a casual gamer, chances are you’re not going to like FE anyway. This isn’t an attempt to turn people away from the game, however, but an introduction to a simple guide I’ve put together for anyone thinking about trying it. (And you really should, even if it’s just the free 9 day trial.) I’ve read quite a few guides, but none of them really summarized everything in a way a casual gamer would be interested in reading. I know my audience, and they have short attention spans. So, I shall attempt to keep you interested.

First, there are a few things you should be aware of at the highest level:

1. There are no classes or races. You’re just a human, and that’s it. The appearance of your human (actually, you’re a clone, but let’s not argue semantics here) is completely customizable, of course, as you would find in any other RPG game. If you want to play a dainty-ass little gnome or some mega-sexy beastly creature, fantasy RPGs are that way à

2. You determine how you play your character by spending your “Advancement Points” (AP). The easiest way for me to explain these is to put them in WoW’s terms. If you take your talent points, your glyphs, your points in leveling weapons skills, your points in leveling all your professions, and you add them all up, that’s basically FE’s AP system. You accrue AP by leveling (It’s a bar that sits along-side your experience bar. When the bar fills up, DING!, you get 2 AP), and also from doing quests which give AP as a completion reward along with XP and currency. You will have a LOT of AP. Currently, there’re over 1000 to be had by the time you get to max level, and you are assigning each point yourself wherever you want to assign them. You have complete control over how you play your character.

3. Now that you understand AP, there’s a caveat: Currently, there is no way to “respec” in the game. Once you assign your AP, that’s it. Forever. (Until they patch in a way to respec.) So, you’re going to want to make sure you research things and figure out how you want to spec/play your toon BEFORE you start putting points in random places. Plan your spec here: http://globaltechplanner.info/

4. There are many, many different ways to play the game. I will briefly describe the most common so that maybe it will help you decide if the game interests you or not.
a. Melee – You hit stuff with clubs, cut people up with swords, etc
b. Pistols – Go Gunslinger on people’s asses. Yes, you can dual wield them.
c. Rifles – Snipe people’s asses from afar.
d. Mutant – Make yourself into some kind of hideous badass with magical abilities.

Combinations of the above are possible, too. A, B, or C with Mutagens on the side as support is the most popular. And don’t worry; there are specs for tanking and healing too, if you’re into that sort of thing. There are also ways to spec that are totally support oriented, meaning you basically do nothing but buff your teammates.

5. The game is HEAVILY focused on crafting. You will spend a majority of your time in the game exploring and scavenging. I find it fun, you may not.

Did I scare you away yet? No? Okay then, let’s continue. Now that I’ve gone over the basics, let’s take it to the next level and discuss spending your AP. The most important thing to remember here is that Stats cost 5 AP to increment 1 point, while Skills and Mutations cost 1 AP to increment 1 point. This is very important.

Now things get a little complicated. Let’s cover Stats first – the 5 AP big boys. Increasing your stats naturally give you passive benefits just like any normal RPG. For example, if you increase your Strength, you can carry more loot before you become encumbered. Stuff like that. I don’t feel I need to describe what each stat does from this general point of view. You get the idea. Just read the tooltip and you’ll understand it. More importantly, however, increasing each stat also increases the max level of your Skill, Mutations, and Tradeskills. This is incredibly important. Let me give you an example:

Let’s say you want to craft a new sword. You open up your Tradeskill window, you go to Weaponry, and you see that you have a recipe for a nice new sword that is an upgrade for you. The recipe states you need to have your Weaponry skill at 40. You are currently at 30. So, you start crafting shitty knives to level up. You get up to 35, but then the next knife you craft doesn’t level you up. What the fucken?? You open up your skills, and you see that currently, your max skill in Weaponry is 35. You need it to be at least 40, obviously. You can do this by increasing one of the stats that are linked to that Tradeskill. In this example, Intelligence and Perception are linked to Weaponry (2x 75% and 2x 25% respectively). So, you throw the appropriate number of AP into Intelligence, raising your Weaponry to a max level of 40. Now you are 35/40. You craft 5 more shitty knives and you’re at 40/40. Now you can make your shiny new sword.

Whew.

So, I think you can see where this is going. Next are your Skills, which determine how you play your character. You’ve got things that make you harder to kill: Armor Use, Dodge. These are tank skills, but in this game just about everyone puts at least some of their AP here. You’ve got Athletics to make you more agile. There’s First Aid if you want to be a healer. There’re Group Tactics and Social if you want to play a support monkey. And then there’re Melee, Pistols, and Rifles to satisfy whichever style you want to play. As I stated, you increase the MAX level of these by increasing the appropriate Stat. Then, you increase YOUR ACTUAL LEVEL by spending AP. Make sense? Okie.
 

Now there are the Mutations. These will modify your character with “magical” abilities. If you’re playing a big ‘ol mutant, obviously you’ll be spending a lot of AP here. There’s a LOT of cool stuff here, and it’s a shame that you can’t experiment with them all on the same character. If you’re going with a main spec in Melee, Pistols, or Rifles with Mutagens as support, pick two of them and only two. And again, Stats increase the Max level of these, and then you spend AP to increase your level. Same as Skills.

Lastly, Tradeskills. This is the crafting portion of the game, which is a big, big portion. Currently, I’m playing a character that is focusing entirely on crafting. The max level of all your tradeskills is based on a base number 11 plus twice the number of 75% of your Intelligence and 25% of your Perception. So, if you want to max out your crafting, you’ll be maxing out those two Stats. Simple. Then, you level your Tradeskills not by spending AP as in Skills and Mutations, but by…crafting things. Duh. There are exceptions, of course. Geology is leveled by going out and finding nodes of metal and mining them. Stuff like that. There are also recipes to level Geology too, so you have many options to raise your skills.

I’ve now given you all the information you need to know in order to get started. I do have a few final pieces of advice:

1. Do the extended tutorial. You get a free horse.

2. Craft the first craftable horse ASAP. It’s vastly superior to that free horsefeed hog.

3. Everything can be found out there in the world or crafted yourself. You don’t have to buy anything. You just gotta look for it, you lazy bastard.

4. Pay at-fucking-tention to what you’re crafting. A lot of things create 5x or 10x the item with one recipe, so don’t make 5 of them (AKA 25 or 50 of them) when you only need 2. (Yes I’ve done this.)

5. Sector Banks are located in every city. Barter Banks are located in every MAJOR city. You can use both. Lots of space = win. And trust me, you’ll need it.

6. What you or your horse can carry is not just limited to how many open inventory slots you have, but also by weight. Make sure you keep an eye on both. There’s nothing more annoying than being in the middle of asscrack nowhere and running out of space when you still have 10x of Whateverthefucks to kill and loot.

Now, it is completely viable to level all the way to the cap by simply questing on your own and crafting all your loot. That’s precisely what I’m doing right now. There ARE group quests out there, so the opportunity to team up with friends (or complete strangers with candy) is also encouraged. As it should be, considering this is a freaking MMO.

The last thing I will mention: PvP and the Factions. I’m putting them together because they go hand-in-hand. Sort of. One third of Fallen Earth’s world is PvP area. PvP is pretty unique in this game, as you don’t just go in there and kill the first player you come across. You actually work towards increasing your rep with the factions you choose to align yourself with, and obviously kill anyone in your way. Increasing your rep with your factions gives you added perks of course, including additional recipes (called Knowledge) and access to rare materials for crafting. I’m not going to get into the minute intricacies, because quite honestly I haven’t had much exposure to it yet. It’ll be a long time before you get to that point – at least level 15, I’m thinking, or whenever you decide to step into Sector 2.

Before I get into any of that, I’m simply playing the game and getting my bearings. I suggest anyone new to the game does the same.